Weddingbee Blog

Some time ago, over a small feast at my favorite Greek restaurant, I asked one of my oldest friends how his wedding planning was going. A thoughtful look crossed his face as he swallowed a bite of gyro. “You know,” he said, “I think planning a wedding is possibly the worst way I can think of to start a marriage.”

Like the insufferable know-it-all that I am, I took this opportunity to climb up on my high horse and gallop around the whole restaurant. You should have heard me. I was all, “Well, having a bad attitude about it doesn’t help…” and “Try to enjoy this time; it’s the only time you’ll ever be engaged!”

It’s not the only time I’ve gently chastised people who are engaged and grumbling. Now I am gobbling up my words, and they do not taste nearly as good as Mediterranean cuisine.

I thought we got away with all the stress people complain about by having a long engagement. At first, I was like…oh yes. We are so clever. When asked about the planning process, I’d give a trilling laugh—Oh that. Total breeze. Everyone should have a long engagement.

People, I am here to tell you: no matter how long you are engaged, you cannot avoid the crunch time before the wedding.
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Way back when I discovered Weddingbee, I would stumble across bee bloggers who were well into their planning, hammering out the weeks-before details. If I wanted to know anything about the “feel” of their wedding—their bridesmaids dresses, their colors, whatever—I had to click their icon, click “Older” posts a bunch of times and scroll. A lot.

Since I often write posts with no pictures at all, I figured I’d prove to new readers (I know you Christmas, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day engagees are out there) that we actually have concrete plans for our wedding, not just a bunch of relationship babble. Also, I’m so close to my wedding that I am writing this post to remind myself: there are things that are decided. There are things that are cohesive. Or something.

Color scheme:

(swatches via 100 Layer Cake)

Bridesmaid dresses: Read more…

I don’t know about your little corner of the world, but things are muggy as a sauna in the Midwest. This weather is throwing a wrench in my plan to wear my hair down. Too bad that I’m dead set on wearing it down—I don’t look or feel like me any other way.

Also causing problems? My complete inability to articulate what I want. This is pretty much what my hair stylist got: Uh, down. Full…kind of wavy but NOT ringlet-y or tight spiral curls. Loose, natural, but definitely different from my usual look.

Somehow, she got my hair to look amazing. The following pictures are of my hair after a few hours and a VERY humid car ride home in wicked traffic. It fell, to be sure, but you know what? I felt like myself, natural but still a little more formal than usual. If the worst that happens is that all the volume and curls fall? Well, my hair will look like my everyday hair. And I will still whip it back and forth on the dance floor.

Note: makeup trial NOT involved. Do not blame my makeup artist for the way my face looks after a long day at work.

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Well, well, bloggyland. It seems that, like so many before me, I’ve fallen victim to a pre-wedding blogging hiatus. But I’m back just in the nick of time. With pictures—fancy!

To be honest, I thought I had our whole wedding pinned down. I’ve been pro-active, organized, prepared. No. Wrong. As we’ve met with vendors, they ask me questions like, “Who will be serving as your ushers?” My response? “Durr…I don’t know…” Even after attending dozens of weddings as a guest, I just didn’t happen to internalize such details.

We’re also in the midst of a LOT of vendor appointments. This week alone:

• Final appointment with DJ (/must have music decisions finalized)
• Meeting with pastor to run through ceremony (/must have ceremony readings finalized)
• Another hair trial (/must make sure I have better inspiration pictures this time)
• Final dress fitting (/must consume carrot sticks and water instead of kettle corn and Sugar-Free Red Bull)
• Appointment with florist to go over new ideas (/must come up with solid ideas with pictures for reference)

Yikes. I think I’ll take that Red Bull after all. Other goings on?

I recently attended a bridal shower in my honor, wherein I ate a lot of crepes and was quizzed about my affianced. And nailed it. Here I am, corsage and all, gesticulating as I explain the inner workings of my partner’s brain:
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I’d like to take a moment to campaign for imperfection.

First, I should tell you that I expected myself to be way more neurotic and controlling about this wedding of ours. So did Pdog, who refers to my relative calm as “a pleasant surprise.” So did my friends and basically everyone who knows me. Oh sure, I still have my moments, but they’re quick, contained, and rational. I think I could fairly describe my bridal attitude as: non-obsessive. This is a shock, even to me.

I’ve been trying to figure out how I found my way to this place of pre-wedding zen. Here’s what I landed on. A few years ago, in a design internship, my boss would scrutinize my first go at a project and say, “Make it less perfect.” Throw it off a little—make it interesting. She was right, every time.

We see these more-perfect blogs and magazines, don’t we? With perfect details in perfect lighting, of brides with impossibly sculpted arms and what appears to be no pores on their face, at all. For awhile, I almost thought I cared if my wedding measured up to these carefully-chosen 10-picture spreads. But you know what? I don’t.

Because here’s the truth, my friends:
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Oh, it is so great. I think I’m handling it more gracefully than any bride who has ever lived.

Here is a transcript of a Gmail chat with Pdog to prove it:

me: it is starting to sink in how close our wedding is.

so. close.

Sent at 5:01 PM on Thursday

J : i know, and i think that’s awesome

Sent at 5:06 PM on Thursday

me: haha

i am laughing through my tears of panic

Sent at 5:08 PM on Thursday
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Nearly a month out now, and I think our wedding accessories are in order! Here are our shiny trappings:

Here we have: Pdog’s cufflinks (in a shape that matches my engagement ring), his ring (brushed metal comfort—fit with milgrain—perfect), and both of my rings (which I’ve talked enough about already). Pdog is so obsessed with his ring. He keeps wearing it around the house, and I have to remind him to take it off before we leave, as to not cause confusion with friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
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My Sue Sylvester-inspired wedding band is in!

Like Ms. Pain-au-Chocolat—who has a somewhat similar engagement ring—I went with a “complementary” wedding band. It was custom-designed to suit my solitaire OR to be worn alone, and I love it.

I want to tell you why I got this ring, when I originally intended to get a 2mm, unadorned band. When we were in high school, Pdog bought me some gorgeous diamond and sapphire earrings. (I’m cursing myself for not having a picture to show you.) I loved them, but they definitely weren’t “everyday” earrings. So I wore them to prom and later to a gala, but honestly, they didn’t get much wear because of their fanciness.
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Do you like my creative title? Ye-ah, nobody strained any muscles coming up with that one. So, last week I wrote 3 posts with literally no pictures. I’ll try to make up for it by updating you with tangible/visible progress in slouching toward the altar.

First up, table numbers. It sounds so trite to say that I love reading. I mean, are there people who don’t? Suffice to say: books are a huge part of my life. But…books- or, at least- fiction- are my thing. Pdog only reads non-fiction about neuroscience.

Photo by Katie Albrecht of Blink of an Eye Photography.

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Now that I am bumbling my way through early adulthood, something has become clear to me: nearly all my disappointments and frustrations stem from a disconnect between my own expectations and what actually happens. My delusions vs. reality…and my delusions are, well, of grandeur.

On the rare occasion that Pdog and I have a row, it’s almost always because of mismatched expectations. Fancy a real-life example? Behold:

Pdog worked late a lot last week, and I felt bad for the poor guy. I decided that, instead of doing my favorite alone-time things in his absence, I would clean the house. It would be this magical surprise—that our house was so clean, and I actually did it myself. We share household cleaning tasks, and I’m not a very good deep-cleaner/scrubber/anythinger. (I am, however, amazing at Google-searching local cleaning services and calling them.) So I rolled up my sleeves, treated our wood floors, and scrubbed the kitchen until it shined like the top of the Chrysler building. And all the while, I kept thinking…this is so worth it. He’ll be so thrilled. I was going to change his life by cleaning our home.

Yeah. He didn’t notice.
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Like most brides-to-be, I have some fears, rational and otherwise, about our wedding day. I fear that all the hotels in Cincinnati will book up before the procrastinators get rooms, and then I will spend my wedding day to setting up a Hooverville in my little urban backyard. I fear extreme weather, and gridlock traffic, and having a bad hair day.

But mostly, I fear I’ll get a migraine.

They started about six months ago, and now I get them about once every two weeks. Luckily, (I mean, if you can call losing half your weekend “lucky”…) they’ve tended to fall on Saturday or Sunday about half the time, saving me from using up all my sick time at work. I’ve tried three different medications now, to no avail. At present, there’s a fourth kind waiting in my purse. If it doesn’t work, the next step will be taking a daily pill to prevent them. I don’t especially like taking medicine, but these aren’t regular headaches—the kind for which you can drink a lot of water / a bit of caffeine and pop some Aleve.

Once it comes on, there’s no stopping or powering through it.
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Hive, Imma play it straight. I need to hit you up for some information, so let me just ask you this up front: when you attend a wedding, what are you hoping to have for dinner? Like…what’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten at a wedding? (Dare I ask…what’s the worst thing…?)

Personally, I prefer delicious but somewhat “lighter” foods, so I don’t feel to weighed down to dance later. Easy enough, right? I should have no problem finalizing my own wedding menu.

But here’s my problem: Pdog and I are very eclectic eaters. This past week alone, we ate scallops one night, salmon another, plus Thai, homemade Mexican, Greek, and Indian food. And—fine—I had a bowl of cereal for dinner one night. Like your diet is sooo perfect.

Since I like everything, it’s hard for me to guess what pickier eaters would dislike. I’d like to venture outside of Chicken Parmesan for our reception dinner, but I want to keep options open for choosier diners as well.

One thing I’m sure of:
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I remember the first time I went to visit my Great-Aunt Ruthie. My mother explained that we were stopping in to see her favorite aunt, my great-aunt, and this sounded torturous to me. I expected a slow-moving, bespectacled old woman who would tell me how much I’d grown since I was a baby. Instead, what I got was a hot tamale with a raucous laugh and a natural talent for conversing with kids.

It was the beach in late July, okay? Ignore our shininess because I don’t know how to use Photoshop.

Ever since, and especially after my own grandmother died when I was 12, Aunt Ruthie has been my dear friend and confidant.
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I brought it on myself. I’ll own up to that. When we started putting save the dates together, we encountered a few sticky whom-to-invite situations. I should have confronted the issues when they surfaced and taken the time to ask my family/friends/you guys for advice. Instead, I thought to myself: that sounds like a problem for future me! Well, Future Me is here now, and she HATES Former Me for her negligence.

Children…?

Oh, the children issue. We thought we’d skirted it because, when we got engaged, we barely knew anyone with kids under 10. But now our invitation list has changed and currently includes several people with young kids. Our reception is really not kid friendly—a historical property for which we carry a hefty event insurance policy, there’s an open bar, probably cigars for the patio, etc. My mom assured me that most people won’t even want to bring their kids—much more fun to have a grown-up evening to eat a nice dinner, dance and utilize the open bar. I guess we’ll see what happens. If young kids show up on RSVPs, I may hire a babysitter/RN/whatever classifications are important to parents and have him/her available in the downstairs rec room of our venue. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. No biggie.

What I learned:
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Kate Middleton has long been a fixture of media in the UK, but her presence has roared into the US in the months since her engagement.

(Such a classic, natural beauty—nothing fake or forced. Go on and get it, girlfriend.)

And honestly? Sometimes I feel a bit bad for her. We think we’ve got expectations from our parents and in-laws? It took less than a day for the media to say the following:

A strong, stable marriage—one that lasts decades and produces heirs—could go a long way toward undoing the damage from the ugly squabbling and televised confessions of adultery that marred the final years of Charles and Diana’s tortured marriage.

“This is their chance to rejuvenate the dynasty,” said Patrick Jephson, former private secretary to Diana.

I must admit, I’m grateful that no one is relying on my marriage and baby-making abilities to “rejuvenate the dynasty.” Or how about this one:
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